Fostering Collaboration, Sociability, Social Capital and Community Governance

I asserts here that social capital is not a final output to resolve the problem of collective action in one hand, but social capital is seen as a process to build confidence and capability of everyone in the communities and to scale up in every situation. The availability of social capital is abundance in the community, but the significant aspect is that how mediating agencies (CBOs, NGOs or government agencies, Local organizations) formulate strategy to use it as an effective mechanism and tools, which enable communities to deal their urgent issues and needs collectively.

My argument here is that how social capital is formed? Does social capital grow as form of culture or structure or functional body of rule and regulation? Does social capital play limited roles between mediating agency and collective action? Why the basic tenets of social capital active among the vulnerable section of community, but not able to recognize their status at community level? This is also important point is that why social capital is seen as important for the community development in last ten or fifteen years?

I have tried to put an effort to understand the significance of social capital, whether this really helps in enabling the community to participate actively at local level? Social capital has been clearly identified and evaluated, but how far external assistance requires for strengthening the existing community organizations or building new organizations? In some cases, the gap between formal and non formal institutions negatively affects the social capital, which may be potential cause of project failure or diminishes the possibility of collective active for certain period of time.

There is a paper entitled “A Social Science Perspective on Social Capital: Social Capital and Collective Action” precisely shows that defining social capital needs multidisciplinary approach and denying the other aspects (human, physical etc) of social capital is not advisable. The economic growth and development is not simply a combination or function of capital and labor. There are many other unseen cognitive forces, such as norms, trust, relationship, engagement, institution (formal and non formal), which have always been significant elements for motivating and inspiring both individual and institutions for making and implementing economic policies. This is the dilemma of defining the social capital and its utility for promoting economic growth and democracy development.

In minimalist view, an Individual is interrelated, interconnected and also interdependent with the society, but the combination of many individuals help in formation of society. Defining social capital as ‘informal norms and cooperation between two individuals’ (Fukuyama, 2000) elaborates the instrumental value of individual, who sometime assists the process of group formation and after a period of time, the social norms, establishing rules; guiding principles of the organization develop collectively. This defines a process, which probably possible in a kind of social structure, where associational affiliation of individual as a member of trade union, club, and professional organizations etc, is important for his or her personal growth and networking. Here, this is not meant to say that the role of individual is not important for building and strengthening social capital at community level, as ‘naya neta’ (new youth leader) in Prof Anirudh’s Active Social Capital (2002) enlarges the definition of leadership, which  manifests  a new kind of individual identity emerging within the community. However, the sum up of this article is that the social capital is complex concept and derives from various means. But the meta question is how social capital is built? Why this is essential? Is theory and practice of social capital different from each other? How to evaluate and assess social capital in the development perspective?

Before going further, I would like to bring Parson’s General Theory of Action in this discussion, in which he argues that the evolution of society or it structure, is based on four systems, such as the cultural system, the social system, the personality system and behavioral organism as a system. The effective coordination and coherence between and among each of these systems help in building ‘social capital’. But, a well developed (active) social capital is not enough to address the policy issue and development problems at community level without the ‘coordination between the government and local based organization’ (Krishna, 2003). Active social capital involves both instrumental as well as cognitive elements, which evolves collective action. Krishna’s argues that institutions matters in establishing ‘link between social capital and societal performance’, capability of agents and institutions (formal and non formal) ensure ‘community development, establish communal harmony and improve people participation in democratic process’.

The study of social capital in Indian villages empirically proves at first instance that the social capital is not static in nature. However, the instrumental nature of social capital in the Indian villages are not free from the identity politics and also not clearly provide enough space for women empowerment and involvement of youth in decision making at community level. Is this a dilemma of existing social structure or is this a deep rooted believe system, which helps in maintaining the status quo in the society?  When we evaluate the social capital in the context of ‘social construction of reality’ (Berger and Luckman, 1966), in which they argues that ‘man is social product’, where the process of socialization and internalization of knowledge play important role in shaping the social structure. In this situation, the cognitive elements of social capital need to be examined deeper.

Prof Anirudh Krishna of Duke University has captured the new pattern of leadership in the Indian villages and how an individual (naya nata) matters for promoting and strengthening the collective action. The emergence of these new breed of leaders is based on many factors, but one of the important factor is that the consistent failure of the government intervention and institutions, and irregular availability of government officials in the local offices has created space for new leaders at village level. This space has been captured by those youth members, who are well connected with the political parties, political leaders and able to play a mediating role between the government officials and villagers. Again, in many ways, these young leaders are different than the traditional leadership in the village and the community. Education and exposure with many types of government offices and officials has enhanced their skills of negotiation, skill to get the work done and enable them to explore incentive for doing work.

Coordination and trust among the group of naya neta in these villages seems challenging because there is hardly any constructive youth space available in the Indian villages, where these neya neta and rural youth have to have regular interaction. Even the community based organization and NGOs address the issue of development, but miss to include these important actors in various activities. Despite of the presence of strong social capital in many villages, there is challenging situation to sustain this social capital for building collective action in future.

The interesting aspect of social capital here is that there are many villages in this study show that these villages have high social capital and high agency capacities, but these villages are not role model of development. This shows how complex is the web of development paradigm? In Indian villages, the capacity and capability of agency is important and these agencies able to facilitate the social capital for the collective action. Generally, villagers do have faith and trust to each other. They do also have knowledge accessing the quality services, but they want their skills to be enhanced in multi dimensional ways to facilitate the collective action process. In this situation, the role of mediating agencies and institutions are significant.

Prof Anirudh’s study about the active social capital precisely asserts that the Indian villages are not homogeneous and state agency and its activities try to fix the development in common parameter. Here, the role of active social capital is significant, which enable community to get advantage of maximum benefit. In many villages in this study, this has been positively correlated that the active social capital in the village able to coordinate with the mediating agencies and individual to get the work done in their village.  The study shows that educational activities in villages are positively correlated with the political activity. This does not mean that this makes villagers politically conscious to make political decision. In fact, educational infrastructure and its space in many villages is widely used by government agency and even political leaders use to organize meeting with villagers in the school premises.  Second, local elected body is responsible for the educational activities. Villages where coordination between elected members and villagers are positive, the educational activities are regularly monitored, but this coordination in many villages also unable to ensure that teachers are regularly coming and classes are being held on time. This affects the quality of education in broader level.

The case study of Watershed development and soil conservation shows that success of program depends upon the combination three strategies, such as technical, social and administrative, which play significant role in involving the villages and this combination ensured the success of the project. This is valuable lesson for the mediating agencies and outside intervention that a comprehensive understanding about the stock of available social capital can be effective tools for the development activities. In last, the discussion of social capital and its measurement are losing the importance of small elements and events, which regularly rebuilding the community and revitalizing the social capital in day to day basis. What I have observed that there are two neighboring villages in conflict to each other. Both of these villages are highly active social capital within each other, but at the time of crisis and happiness, they are together and they work together. Is this a social capital works without any mediating agency? Or is this basic need of human survival and security of human being in the community set up?

This is also a fact that there are large number of vulnerable population, who unable to share their voice in front of village council and leaders. For example, women, children and youths are almost non existences in the decision making process, even the mediating agency don’t actively involve them, but the basis ethos of social capital is preserved or practiced by these groups regularly in their respective sexual and age group. Women group show tremendous level of cooperation and trust at the time of domestic violence and communal disturbance at village level on each other. In the same ways, the youth group is best connector in any of the village. I believe that an alternative set of evaluation and assessment of social capital could be developed or evolved for building development programs and activities for promoting collective action in the present scenario.

Management, Technology and Information

Whenever we go through the different facets of communities and its development, we acknowledge that every effort to bring community together for collective action is neither great nor insignificant. In this week readings, we have drawn many lessons, but one lesson is clearly coming out from these readings that there are two theoretical aspects; one contains the idea of encouraging the technical intervention, in which, ICTs, organization, management, professional human resources are considered as important ingredients for involving and helping people in decision making. While other facet underlines the significance of learning, reflection, local knowledge, involvement, information, knowledge as a sequence of building local organization.

In reality, these two different theoretical aspects of community involvement and development are neither exclusive, but can work effectively in combination. Readings of this class covers both social and technical aspect of community involvement at organizational level and show that there are web of methodologies and directions, which enable us to ‘unlearn’ what we have learned for addressing the issue of community development in effective ways.

Community is not a well developed structure but a conglomeration of natural, social economic diversity and also diverse group of human beings, and they have their own experience, knowledge, learning and acculturation process. In the similar manner, the outsider understanding about the community is also based on his or her interaction, where he or she gets educated, worked and what he or she is intended to do? Robert Chamber has tried to capture the reality on the basis of biases, which impediment the development process. In fact, Chamber’s idea of biases is also not free from ‘stereotyped presentation’ of actors and actions. For example, rural development is not an easy area, where merely increasing the agriculture productivity would not able to solve the entire problem. The biggest challenge of rural development is generalization and mainstreaming with macro perspective. The lack of comprehensive planning, long term perspective and monitoring mechanism also make this problematic further.

 In fact, rural development demands target oriented efforts, context specific intervention and consistent capacity building and training program for both implementing agencies and stakeholders (rural people, including women and youths). Breaking stereotyped and go away from the different set of biases is quite challenging at both organizational and individual level, but not impossible. The effort of many organizations has addressed these issues effectively.

Robert Chamber coins “rural development tourism” and argues that the urban based educated professionals want to get to know and experience about the rural condition and about the rural people within the short span of visiting time in the rural areas. On the basis of this short term interaction, they are intended to develop ‘effective strategy’ for inclusive development of people. Chamber believes that development procedure and development practice is not the same concept, former is related with ‘things’ and later is related ‘people’. Chamber believes that every methodology, which encourages people participation, should be fragile in nature, so we would able to recognize and integrate the innovation and creativity of local people. He has cited many important methodologies such as PRA, RRA, ILS etc, which are still evolving and developing whenever these are practiced with the local people.

Ensuring involvement of people and their participation, there is need to be evolved a kind of organization at local level, which would create enabling environment to establish synergy with the ‘product’ and ‘people’. This coordination between both, product and people’ is significant and this allows envisioning future course of action and replication. What I believe that every organizational efforts of community development at local level have its own valid points, because nature of developmental issues are quite complex and there is no black and white kind of solution available. I agree that an effective coordination between these organizational efforts is possible, when local people recognize the challenges and build their own network at local level.

In many successful case studies, this has been acknowledged that vertical nature of organization at local level have played vital role in bringing the community together and also enabled the community to build effective communication channel for better result. In vertical organization, the scope of learning and reflection is high and encourage every member to share themselves. The philosophy of participation and its value are core issue, and the local organization helps in creating the enabling environment to ensure participation of everyone. Again, the nature of participation and its social dynamics depend upon deepening the value system of local organization, because ensuring the participation of everyone at local level is complex issue. This can be resolved if the organization recognizes the different layers of ‘local knowledge’, considering this for building the development planning and program.

The local organization or any kind of organization is not a single entity and even in the successful cases (Gal Oya, NDDB, SANASA, Grameen), this has been recognized that the term of reference of these organizations not predefined and preplanned, but managerial functioning of the organization has been both evolved and devolved through a process of local participation, building people capacity and creating right kind of environment to ensure active participation for collective action and most important was the coordination between local leaders with the people. Building human resources for the local organization is an easy task. A different range of training programs and exposure with diverse nature of methodologies are required for sustaining the organizational effort. For building capacity of participants and staffs, organization recognizes technology is important assets. This recognition is called as “improved hardware”. However, the utility of technology in problem solving at organization level is crucial and helps in record keeping and monitoring the resources at lower level. The technology does not help significantly in improving living standard of local people and also not able to address the real issue of development effective, because the technology is guiding force not the guiding principle for the community development.

Here, we have to recognize that digital divide is quite prevalent in every community and within the organization. The ICT is a kind of value addition in the existing system of local organization and people participation in decision making process. ICT is not panacea but this is playing a vital role in bridging the divide between the information sharing mechanisms, functioning of the organizational offices and also creating a culture of transparency and accountability.

The world is not flat in real sense, but in virtual sense and macro level, the world is connected to each other. The important point is here that does ICT help in building knowledge about community development or poverty alleviation or share the information, which is filled from the external source? Chamber already has raised questions over the intention of external sources. Many rural development projects have been successfully implemented, when the process to involve the people is integrated to build their own rules and regulation for the functioning of local organization. There are three main critics of technology as followed. Technology cannot be used at local level without minimum level of operational infrastructure and functional literacy. Second, the digital divide is widely prevalent and third is that a special kind of training methodology is required for building the capacity and capability of people.

Both cases in today class provide convincing evidences that people matters and they lie in the centre of development process. But the importance of other centrifugal forces and instruments such as local organization, management, training and development. Human resources etc assist the circle to move smoothly. The best of agriculture program in Guatemala was that the program recognized those techniques, which were able to produced ‘visible success’, therefore, the program involved those kind of equipments which were comfortable to be used by the people. As Schumacher has called this as ‘intermediate technology’ (in his book, Small is Beautiful). 

In last, this is not easy to provide a set of management and technological tools, which can create wonder, but the effective utilization of these tools can produce wonderful result. The utilization of these tools is based on the skills enhancement and building capacity of local people and staffs. The propensity of technology is not sustainable in nature; therefore, to enable the local organization as technologically viable is also not a sustainable future. In this scenario, the program and project, which builds human capacity and involve them collectively to resolve the basic problem provides blueprint for the development and management of local organization. In last, the unlearning should also be encouraged for deepening the idea of participation and involvement of local people and to distinguish about the information and knowledge. Gathering information is not true meaning of knowledge. 

Emotional Organic Chemistry...

While going through “Woodward Hoffman Rules”, which inspired me to write about it.

The rules clearly question why chemical reaction proceeded in the way that they did in particular? Why certain reaction led to only a single product, while many products were potentially possible?

Last few weeks, I have gone through different kind of chemical reactions and not able to recognize that, are these happening in the domain of inorganic or organic setting or is it fair for a person who believes on scientific temperament? ‘chemical bonds are formed when electrons in an atom interact with the electrons in another atom’. Despite invisible interaction, why formation of molecules missing in our relationship. Therefore, fission started taking place within me and I started believing that I am rust resistant atom!

Idea of Chemistry is not based on exploration of human feeling. But, our feeling provides enough evidences about chemical reaction happens when we feel or we think or we react. Is it the generosity of chemical knowledge or is it our limitation to keep aloof about chemical reaction happens within ourselves while thinking, feeling, loving and liking something and someone.  Working in Organic laboratory has enabled us to disqualify the inorganic substance of feel good and feel happy but the sense of completeness is binary in nature therefore, the virtual world moves fast in influencing our decision.

Generally, we all assume that the success of relationship is based on compatibility because we have heard it, we have experienced it or it’s being promoted in our day to day life. But, we never scientifically accept that compatibility is built in the process, over a period of time. I am not compatible to someone does not mean I am going to leave the person without allowing him to share his beautiful layer of understanding to learn other facets of compatibility of and from the loved one!  

Linus Pauling got awarded Nobel Prize for his work in Chemistry in 1954. He never thought that after 8 years, he would be awarded for Nobel Peace Prize. Consistency in the relationship makes the person better and also allows him to adjust with the prevailing situation. Discovery of like minded person happens in invisible state of mind. Once the invisibility suddenly get translated into reality, the person gets elated and start showing reverence towards the discovery.

Before the Haber Process, Iron was never treated as a catalyst. During the World War 1, Germans used it in industrial scale for producing ammonia along with nitrogen and hydrogen. In the similar situation, any relationship is not based on visible traits. There are hidden elements, which need to be explored for making it beautiful and long lasting. Love is not simply a feeling or an adjective. It’s a movement and it’s a verb in nature.

Liking the person is started in the process and even its happens in few days of interaction. I like you and I believe here as you responded in the same ways. In between, your organic reaction coordinated with inorganic atoms. Consequently, you come to know that I am not compatible for this person so this person never knows what compatibility means! Is it chemistry or chemical reason or organic dis-satisfaction or any identical trait bothers you?

Lastly, chemical reaction means the interaction or coming together of two or more atoms, icons, substance, molecules. Without understanding chemical reactions, we are not able to understand the significant of chemical composition. My interest towards knowing Chemistry ignited more when I got to know the best person works in this area. But, I was not exploring the scientific aspect of subject but generating interest to know its humane touch and its humane aspects.

David Hwang wrote an insightful article entitled “Thermodynamic of Love”, which correctly argues, Reactant + Reactant → Product…..Building product in preconceived notion discourage innovation and creativity, which limits our horizon and we start disbelieving on the same product, which we have created either in short span of time or over a period of long time. Therefore, we react, we don’t want to change our decision and we don’t want to reconsider.

I believe that “novelty significantly elevates activity of dopamine in the brain”!

Reality speaks the truth........

While interviewing the three hundred families, shattered around the urban and the rural setting in Udaipur of Rajasthan state in India, this has been observed that the upward social mobility in term of education, occupation, status etc is disturbing trend in rural areas, while the situation is also not quite impressive in the urban setting also. Both places are socially stratified society, the development of roads and growth of transportation facilities have grown significantly. This has increased the chances of reasonable economic mobility, but the positive changes in status and educational enhancement is confined around those families, who have been in advantageous position since long period of time.

The basic reasoning here is that the universalization of even elementary education is just a one or two decade old. Although, the educational facilities, both public and private have increased significantly, but the absence of effective institutional mechanism and high rate of drop out, teacher absenteeism has made the accessibility of quality education still as a distance dream for almost majority of population in the country.

Many families are unable to educate their children because of the economic reason. However, this is one of the common cause has been shared by almost every families, where the change in level of education is not visibly persistent in the generation. The sense of achievement is also diversified among the families. In the village level, the most of the families are not able to recognize the ineffective schooling system and absence of proper guidance as the important factors in preventing their children to do well in their life. The interesting aspect is that a large number of families want their son to join the government teaching profession. They observe that the government teacher get good salary without regularly going to school and also get advantage of pension after getting retired from the job.

The important question is why teaching job is one of the best profession in the rural and semi urban social setting? In the prevailing situation of poverty of inspiration among the families, the teacher as person, in the area is seen as most educated and respected person, and a large number of government vacancies are also available in this profession. This has also observed that there are a large number of youth members have completed their basic teacher training professional courses from the other states in India, to get eligible to apply for the government appointed teaching job.

However, sending their children for getting educational degree from other states and city are limited in number and is prevalent in those families, who are able to afford or also have some relative in the places, where the educational institutes are available. The role of relatives in helping the upward social mobility is positive in nature. Again, this is dependent upon the type of relationship and also in cordial family environment. In general, the fight over the immovable property is common in those areas, which make the relation better within the family.

The presence of educational institutions and its functional status are different to each other. In the villages, where schools are functional and also provide 12 years of schooling, many students in these villages are educationally active and pursuing college education. But, there is negligible number of students are able to enroll in the professional education. A gap of four decade has been identified between the two engineers in a village near to urban center. When talking with the family, the family head is in teaching profession, this has been recognized that his son had interaction with the person, who qualified engineering four decades ago and inspired to become the same. After completing his secondary school, he took extra classes for the competitive examination.

Apart from learning and understanding, the effective educational opportunity promotes many choices and options. Career guidance and counseling in the rural and semi urban is a kind of kind, which takes place once in a year. However, this is not a common trend in the school. The role of school teachers and principles do matter in organizing this kind of event in the rural and semi urban areas, while this is a regular feature in many private schools in the urban areas. This is clearly coming out in the observation that the extra effort of teaching staffs in the school also helpful to the student to learn new aspect of choosing career.

Professional diversity is another area, which helps in examining the social mobility, but this is also important that the nature of professional diversity matters in acknowledging the trend and pattern of the social mobility. There are diversity of professional engagement in the rural and semi urban areas, but these professions are not at all lift the family in socially mobile. Apart from the agriculture engagement, a list of sixteen professions has been identified as most popular professional engagement in the rural and semi urban areas. Migrant labor, drivers, motor mechanics, small shop keepers, self employed professions such as barber, carpenter, painters are quite popular among the respondents. There are less number of respondents, have become doctors, engineers, advocates and bank managers.

Although, the occupational diversity has potential to create many avenues and opportunity to enhance their income earning possibility in the village, but, the essence of social mobility is not directly get addressed in the prevailing situation. Here, this is also to clear that, the occupational diversity does not encourage the equal possibility for everyone. A limited number of family is able to avail this opportunity to make their son to move up socially. While, in most of the family in the rural areas, the son is either a migrant labor or daily wage earner or seasonally engaged in the farming.

During the interaction with the family, this has been observed that the farming is considered a least preferred profession among them and they are not interested to engage their sons in this occupation. One family clearly said that his son has not yet married because he has been doing farming after dropping out the school.
The most family want their son to get a job or earn money in the city. Despite of facing the difficult situation related to living in the city, they shared that even farming is also a difficult occupation. In the rural areas, migration to city is probably seen as the status enhancement and helps them to improve the family position in the rural setting. However, this is also a need based option for them, because, the farming is not providing substantial amount of cash to meet the other expenditure at household.

Even the Principle of city based government engineering college has accepted that the most of the students are studying in engineering course in the college have been educated in the urban school and their parents are educated. There are some students who belong to the rural areas, but they have qualified the examination on the basis of caste based reservation. The drop out rate is high among the reserved category of students. The reason behind of this high drop out and low entrance of the rural school educated students are eventually hidden in the schooling system. In many villages, this has been observed that the students have taken their final examination of the subject like science and mathematics, without any teaching guidance. The post of these subjects’ teachers has been lying vacant in the school since years.

The rural students, who are studying in the educational centers, they also accept that whatever they have been studying here without any proper guidance. One aspirant of teaching profession said that he wanted to study science to become doctor but he could not take science because they science subject was not available in his village school and the financial problem prevented him to get enroll in the other school outside his village. Now, he is inspiring to be a government teacher, because he wants to get a government job. There are a large number of educated students or aspirants for the government job subscribe the similar stories. Eventually, this situation critically highlights that the government is still consider a important player in creating and providing the secure job opportunity.

The faith on the private sector among the rural masses is still not fully developed and the limited professional options are available for the rural masses in the private sector, because a majority of the educated youth are least interested to look for an employment in the private sector. The information about the different kind of jobs in the private sectors is also limited among the families in these villages. While most of the migrant labors from these villages are working in the informal sector, which is largely controlled by the private individual in the urban centers.

In some villages, which are located around the mines and industrial development location, the children of these villages have been enrolled in many professional courses, such as engineering, medical, Para medical, nursing etc. In identifying those families, this is again clearly shows that the most of the families were in historically advantageous position and educational environment were prevalent among them last few generation. However, some families belong to the lower social status, but the family head has been employed in the government sector or has been attached with teaching profession. They have disclosed that while staying in this locality, they were able to provide good education with proper guidance to their children, helped them to build their career in the upcoming profession.

The demonstration effect is also an important information network for those, who are not exposed to many other professions, which can be better option for the social mobility. The demonstration effect is also a source of inspiration in the society. The magnitude of this effect has been observed in the discussion and narration about the individual achievement in the villages and semi urban setting. The oral tradition in the family acknowledges and strengths the demonstration effect and inspire their growing up youth to learn from others who have done comparatively better and achieved in their life.

Demonstration effect also encourages building better information network for proper guidance, create many options and choices and most important aspect is to provide opportunity to individual for taking decision about what he or she would like to pursue in his or her future career. Generally, this is a source of inspiration for many families and individual. In many villages, this is also a matter of pride and recognition that if anyone qualifies or well placed in the job market. But, in most of the villages and semi urban localities, there is lack of local role model as a source of inspiration. While asking about what they want to become in their life? Most of the parents were interested to see their children above their own social and economic status, but majority of grown up individual either don’t able to recall what was good profession for them or they never had dream to become highly qualified professionals. This is not a fault of an individual, but a faulty system selectively promotes the ranges of dreaming and inspiration for minimum number of people.

Is their any relationship between the economic deprivation and poverty of inspiration in the rural areas? The observation shows that there is some evidences of positive relationship between these two situations of poverty, and there are many fathers of economic deprivation and poverty of inspiration in the rural and semi urban areas in India. The growth and development of an individual is largely under consideration of the family. Within the family, the individual’s needs are fulfilled and satisfied. When, we find that some families are moving fast in the social mobility ladder because the economic situation of the family is better than others, so they are able to create conducive environment for the personal and professional growth for the growing up individual in the family. The observation clearly states that the role of family matters a lot for the positive development of individual. The merit of this argument is based on the observation but this point is also not free from the critical evaluation.

This has been observed that the people of those villages are resourceful and comparatively better off which are located near to the urban center. They have become materially well off by selling their fertile land to small industrial units or business enterprises. In some of these villages, some instance of the professional enhancement has happened. Specially, some girls have done extremely well in these villages. The reason is not they have been educated because of merely money, but their parents provided them consistent educational support and their relative also played important role in extending support.

Family matters but where is the choice for Individual?

Growing up in family, a individual who doesn’t have access to education, information, employment opportunity, and is also surrounded by the similar socio economic condition create a kind of situation, where individual is unable to dream and also inspire to be part and parcel of ongoing social development and economic growth in the country. Examining the status enhancement and social mobility in the rural and semi urban area in India is a challenging task and also need broader level of involvement to understand the intricacies in the social relationship. There are many instances, which inspire to visualize the better future, but there are maximum cases, the changes in status and social mobility is almost non existent. However, the relationship between the origin and destination can be a valuable tool to evaluate the changes, but there are many factors, which influence both the origin and destination in an individual life cycle in India.

This is also here to acknowledge that the social mobility is not simply an outcome of an effort of a family, but the prevailing condition and available opportunity play vital role in making the social mobility as collective force in the society. Therefore, an individual is a collective entity, which is shaped as person over a period of time while having closely interacted with family, informal and formal institutions. What is important in this relationship is opportunity and clear understanding to recognize the strength of social and cultural capital in the origin, which determines the future destination.
The idea of social mobility is more or less confined around the analysis of caste hierarchies and economic system in India. In aggregate term, the efforts and polices are paying off, but in real life situation, the benefits are not equally distributed. Apart from political dimension to argue about the hierarchical social structure, the accessibility of socio economic institution and accessibility of information networking play vital role in shaping the destination of individual and the family. In this paradigm, we could try find the answer that why some individual in some families are doing better than the others despite of staying in the same locality.

http://www.sevamandir.org/publications/newsletter/NLJan2009.htm